If You Can't Stand The Dissent, Get Out Of The Kitchen

Dinner wasn't the only thing cooking in Soviet kitchens.

Meet Simo Häyhä the White Death of Finland

Meet the farmer who racked up 505 confirmed kills as a sniper during the Winter War.

LOL: P.J. O'Rourke "Explains" Russian History

After casting a sardonic, hilariously reductive eye over a thousand years of Russian history, humorist P.J. O'Rourke is confident that Putin, in keeping with that history, will destroy himself sooner or later. 

I do remember a discussion with Alessandra a few years back about Russian history and how Russia had serfs long after everyone else had abandoned serfdom.  This was swiftly followed by her observation that only in Russia would the act of ending serfdom make life even worse for the serfs - er, ex-serfs.

Oh, I can't resist quoting a bit of O'Rourke:

"After his [Ivan the Terrible's] reign, Russia, if you can believe it, got worse. 'The Time of Troubles' featured more drought, more famine, more plague, foreign invasions, massacres, the occupation and sacking of Moscow, and tsars with names like False Dmitry I and False Dmitry II."

Hey, you forgot False Dmitry III!

May Day

Since 2007, Ilya Somin has treated today as a day to remember the victims of Communism.  Let us continue and join in.

(I can't help adding that one of my friends actually flaunted the hammer and sickle today.  I felt sick.  Geez, woman!  Would you so blithely flaunt the swastika?)  

Imaging Mao's Famine

A historian wonders: Where is the photographic evidence of Mao's disaster?  In the Great Leap Forward (Into the Abyss), at least 45 million people died of starvation and oppression over some 4 years of absolute hell on earth, but visual documentation is largely lacking.  Honestly, how does it look that the some officials in the Soviet Union was more forthcoming about the murderous famine that Stalin created in Ukraine?

One wonders, though, whether if we ever saw the Chinese photos, we would be thoroughly sickened.  The end of the article details the only photo of the famine that the author ever saw, and the description is horrifying.  

UPDATE: No photos of the Great Famine, but you can still get an eyeful of the Communist propaganda posters from the same period.  Surreal.

Book Review: New Biography of Mao

This one focuses on Mao's ties with Stalin. The bloodiest bromance of the 20th century?

EUrocrats Not Even Bothering to Hide It Anymore

Why bother since you've already snagged the Nobel Peace Prize?  Take a look at this EU propaganda "yay for us" poster.  TAKE A GOOD LOOK. 

Forgotten History: The First Woman in Space

Ever heard of Valentina Tereshkova?  (The first American woman in space was, of course, Sally Ride in 1983.)

History Lesson: 100 Years in 10 Minutes

This is an interesting compilation, though I do take issue with the fact that the selection is often desultory and that it focuses too much on the negative and does not include enough mention of humanitarian, scientific, medical, artistic, and other forms of achievements.  (No, mentioning the founding of Greenpeace does not count.)   It's so pessimistic, complete with the depressingly doom-tastic soundtrack.  I also found it a little odd that the founding of Israel in 1948 was not included, even though this moment in history is hugely important both to supporters and opponents.  Well, still, whoever made this took the time and effort to do this, so props to them.  Maybe I should make my own video.

20 Years After the End of the USSR

A few thoughts.  Don't be fooled by the apologists for the Soviet Union (and other exponents of totalitarian Communism) or the dipsticks who are into retro Commie chic.

You Miserable Vomitous Mass: Meet This Useful Idiot for Totalitarian Communism

Meet British historian Eric Hobsbawm, who has a new book.  As for the man:

In a now infamous 1994 interview with journalist Michael Ignatieff, the historian was asked if the murder of "15, 20 million people might have been justified" in establishing a Marxist paradise. "Yes," Mr. Hobsbawm replied. Asked the same question the following year, he reiterated his support for the "sacrifice of millions of lives" in pursuit of a vague egalitarianism. That such comments caused surprise is itself surprising; Mr. Hobsbawm's lifelong commitment to the Party testified to his approval of the Soviet experience, whatever its crimes. It's not that he didn't know what was going on in the dank basements of the Lubyanka and on the frozen steppes of Siberia. It's that he didn't much care.

Disgusting.  In a just world, he should be run off campus in utter disgrace for justifying outright massacre and industrial-scale cruelty.  I'm sick of useful idiots who keep insisting that Communist regimes who slaughtered, imprisoned, brutalized, and oppressed millions of people "just weren't doing it right" and that the next great Commie effort will bring some ludicrous Marxist paradise on earth.  Inhuman, immoral garbage.  They might think they're revolutionary, but I only find them revolting.  Of course, these dipsticks assume that they will be among the Communist elites who get to run the new utopia, not one of the "15, 20 million" who get to be cavalierly sacrificed -- nay, liquidated -- "for the greater good."  The greater good of the nomenklatura, you mean.  What is my professional academic opinion of this type of historian?  *Barf!*

Mikhail Gorbachev at Age 80

An interesting interview.

History Debate: Japan's Surrender in WWII

This post actually isn't about Truman and the Bomb.  Take a look at a relatively new take on Japan's surrender:

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa - a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara - has marshaled compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan’s surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack. It also raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period. And it suggests that we could be headed towards an utterly different understanding of how, and why, the Second World War came to its conclusion.

I'd have to look into Hasegawa's research before I can form an educated opinion. Oh, and as for  the news writer's bit about "provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period," I will take issue with that.  You can't possibly be saying that the idea of mutually assured destruction didn't play a big role in how the US and USSR as Cold War superpowers regarded each other.

Well, It Wasn' t Another Che Guevara T-Shirt

I've ranted before about college-aged morons wearing shirts printed with the ugly mugs of Che Guevara and Mao.  This time, it was different.  No Che.  Nope, this time it was an oblivious undergraduate girl wearing a picture of Stalin.  STALIN!  *facepalm*  Little idiot probably had no idea what kind of murderous monster he actually was. Hell, it's like wearing a picture of Hitler.

Quote of the Day: "Marxists. I Hate These Guys."

Read the whole thing.  It's really not about hating Marxists in general, but about a particularly virulent and nasty subspecies: the shameless apologist for totalitarian Communism, that blood-soaked and evil creed.

A History of Stalin's and Mao's Useful Idiots

Take a listen to this 2-part documentary from the BBC World Service.  Hurry, though, as it won't be available online for too much longer.  You can download it as an mp3 and listen to it later.  But do listen.  The "useful idiots" phenomenon is not confined to those murderous monsters Stalin and Mao.  Here's the blurb from the BBC:

The phrase 'useful idiots', supposedly Lenin’s, refers to Westerners duped into saying good things about bad regimes.

In political jargon it was used to describe Soviet sympathisers in Western countries and the attitude of the Soviet government towards them.

Useful idiots, in a broader sense, refers to Western journalists, travellers and intellectuals who gave their blessing – often with evangelistic fervour – to tyrannies and tyrants, thereby convincing politicians and public that utopias rather than Belsens thrived.

In part one John Sweeney looks at Stalin's Western apologists.

In part two he explores how present day stories of human rights abuses across the world are still rewritten. [Note: Part two also mentions Mao. You know how I feel about him! -- MM.]

RELATED POSTS: 

• Intellectuals and the Really, Really Bad Ideas They Often Support.
• The Ukrainian Famine Under Stalin (and the intrepid Welsh journalist Gareth Jones)

How the Mighty Have Fallen: Former Soviet Spies Appalled At How Much Current Ones Suck

*GIGGLE!*  From a report in the Los Angeles Times:

Meeting over iced tea at an empty cafe just outside Moscow, one recently retired spy master who agreed to an interview on condition he not be identified, just shook his head as he reviewed a printout of quotes from the FBI affidavit.

"It is really a national shame and humiliation for Russia and its special services," said the retired officer, who worked for many years as a spy-controller in the West. The U.S. documents "scream of the despicable level of professional training of the alleged Russian spies and those who trained and prepared them for this work."

Forgotten History: Horrors in the Soviet Archives

No matter how bad you thought totalitarian Soviet communism was, it was worse.

Here is a thought:

In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.

. . .

Indeed, many still subscribe to the essential tenets of Communist ideology. Politicians, academics, students, even the occasional autodidact taxi driver still stand opposed to private property. Many remain enthralled by schemes for central economic planning. Stalin, according to polls, is one of Russia’s most popular historical figures. No small number of young people in Istanbul, where I live, proudly describe themselves as Communists; I have met such people around the world, from Seattle to Calcutta.

We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about. If they contain what Stroilov and Bukovsky say—and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they do—this is the obligation of anyone who gives a damn about history, foreign policy, and the scores of millions dead.

And that's exactly why this history nerd blogs about it. Now go read this.

UPDATE: Yes.

History: The Ukrainian Famine Under Stalin

Via Ninme comes this news link both to a reminder of the horrific misery caused by Stalin and to the courage of a British journalist who documented it. Journalist Gareth Jones' diaries went on display at the University of Cambridge on November 13. He had illegally sneaked into Ukraine from Russia in 1933. The estimated number of Ukrainians who died in the famine of the 1930s is 4 million.

Here is one scholar's assessment of the Jones diaries:

Rory Finnin, lecturer in Ukranian studies at Cambridge, said that Jones’s diaries finally give a voice to the peasants who died as a result of Stalin’s collectivisation policies. Grain was requisitioned for urban areas and for export to countries including Britain.

Historians continue to debate whether Stalin was deliberately punishing Ukranian nationalists, but it is clear that he allowed the famine to occur. He sealed the border between Russia and Ukraine and punished peasants accused of “hoarding grain”.

Mr Finnin said: “There were a smattering of stories here and there [but] but I don’t know if Western historians gave [the famine] the serious attention that it receives today.”

Alas, the Ukrainian famine is largely forgotten history here. On a related matter, you'll recall how many millions, largely peasants, starved in China because of Mao's policies.

History Lesson: How to Remember the Berlin Wall and East Germany

Listen up, class! As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall approaches, Claudia Rosett has your history lesson of the day:

When the Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago, it did not fall from sheer wear and tear of tyranny. People actively chose to destroy it. They tore down that iconic wall not only with pickaxes, hammers and bare hands, but as a culminating act of decades of sacrifice, courage, determination and a complex, globally contested war of ideas.

Many of the vital battles were fought by people living far from Berlin. They were fought by people who persisted in the face of everything from ridicule to misguided Utopianism to violence, imprisonment and the hot wars that flared along the front lines of the Cold War.

The wall itself, built in 1961, stood for 28 years, and was just a small part of the massive iron curtain with which the Soviet empire penned in the people of Eastern Europe. But the wall became a symbol of the far larger divide that split the world for much of the 20th century, partitioning great swathes of the globe into spheres of influence in which the basic trajectories were free vs. unfree, capitalist democracy vs. command-and-control Communism.

Yes. This seems obvious, but it's unfortunately not. Read the whole thing.

The Wall did NOT fall because of the current (stupid) tropes floating around some circles, such as (a) it just kind of happened, (b) Saint Gorbachev ended the Cold War because he was just such a nice guy, or (c) everyone oppressed by totalitarian Communism one day woke up, wished really hard, and *poof!* suddenly freedom happened.

The revisionists who are mangling history (out of a combination of willful cussedness and cloudy-eyed ignorance) are out in full force about the Cold War, and I am sorry and angry to say that Obama's just as bad about it as the worst of the closeted academic so-not-crypto-Marxist egghead Communist sympathizers yearning to engage in social engineering, the would-be puppetmasters (with us as the puppets, of course) constrained only by lack of means and opportunity.

Previous rants here and here.

Related news story on the East German aftermath here:

Now, the battle over how the GDR is to be remembered — or not — is raging hot. The former cadres would like the GDR to be remembered as some kind of benign leftist social-welfare experiment, idealistic and well-intentioned in looking after people from cradle to grave, if perhaps a tad over-zealous.

Former human rights activists, political prisoners and historians — of left and right — would have it remembered as it was. Then it might serve as a warning to future generations about the dual seductions of belief and obedience.

A growing degree of Ostalgie — toxic, rose-coloured fantasy — infects misrepresentations of the late state.

Memory IS a battleground . . . which means you better go armed with hard facts and evidence, along with a big dose of skepticism for pretty words and shiny rhetoric.